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Top 10 Richest People In Asia In 2024

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Asia is home to some of the globe’s richest people, with fortunes built across a wide spectrum of industries, including technology, telecommunications, real estate, and e-commerce.

This article gives you a summary of the wealthiest people in Asia for 2024, according to Forbes India.

Mukesh Ambani (India, $113.5 billion)

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Mukesh Ambani chairs and manages Reliance Industries Limited, India’s most valuable company by market value, which operates in refining, petrochemicals, retail, and telecommunications. Forbes has consistently named Ambani as India’s wealthiest individual for the last decade.

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Gautam Adani (India, $85.7 billion)

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Gautam Adani leads the Adani Group, a $81 billion conglomerate involved in ports, airports, energy, and green projects. Since beginning as a trading firm in 1988, he has become one of Asia’s wealthiest individuals.

Adani has demonstrated his expertise as India’s leading airport operator and manager of Gujarat’s major Mundra Port. His strategic purchase of Holcim’s Indian assets in 2022 also elevated him to the position of India’s second-largest cement producer.

Prajogo Pangestu (Indonesia, $61.8 billion)

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Prajogo Pangestu, Indonesia’s wealthiest individual, made his fortune primarily in energy and petrochemicals. Starting with timber, his company, PT Barito Pacific, has expanded significantly into Indonesia’s plastics manufacturing, mining, and energy sectors.

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Pangestu’s wealth surged in 2023 with the initial public offerings of his companies, Petrindo Jaya Kreasi and Barito Renewables Energy, marking their entry into the stock market.

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Zhong Shanshan (China, $59.3 billion)

Zhong Shanshan, the founder of Nongfu Spring, a prominent bottled water company, is Asia’s third-richest person and the wealthiest in China. Nongfu Spring has grown to become one of China’s largest beverage companies, offering a wide array of products, including water, juice, and tea.

Colin Zheng Huang (China, $50.7 billion)

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Colin Huang, the founder of PDD Holdings (formerly Pinduoduo), a major Chinese e-commerce giant, still holds a substantial ownership stake of around 28% in the company despite stepping down as chairman. He has expanded his interests into online gaming with Xinyoudi and launched another e-commerce platform, Ouku.com.

Zhang Yiming (China, $43.4 billion)

Zhang Yiming, the visionary behind the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, is most renowned for creating the immensely popular app TikTok, which boasts over 1 billion users globally. As of March 2023, he holds a two percent stake in ByteDance.

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However, uncertainty looms over its value due to potential US bans on TikTok, following recent legislative actions granting the US government authority to pursue such measures. Apart from TikTok’s fame, ByteDance is involved in various sectors, including news, education, and gaming.

Savitri Jindal & family (India, $41.2 billion)

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Savitri Jindal, widow of founder Om Prakash Jindal, now chairs the Jindal Group, which encompasses steel, power, cement, and infrastructure sectors. Following OP Jindal’s passing, the group’s companies were divided among their sons and now operate independently.

Her son Sajjan Jindal, based in Mumbai, oversees the group’s most significant assets. Savitri Jindal not only ranks among Asia’s wealthiest individuals but also holds the distinction of being India’s richest woman. She continues her late husband’s legacy of community support through contributions to education, healthcare, and other sectors.

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Ma Huateng (China, $40.4 billion)

Ma Huateng, also known as Pony Ma, founded and chairs Tencent Holdings, a leading Chinese technology company. Beginning his career in the tech industry, Ma established Tencent in 1998. The company is renowned for its expertise in social media, e-commerce, and gaming.

Tadashi Yanai and Family (Japan, $36.8 billion)

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Tadashi Yanai is the founder and chairman of Fast Retailing, a prominent clothing company headquartered in Tokyo that owns Uniqlo stores. Fast Retailing also controls other brands such as Theory, Helmut Lang, J Brand, and GU. Uniqlo, its primary brand, operates over 2,400 stores in 25 countries, solidifying Tadashi’s position among Asia’s top 10 richest individuals.

Li Ka-shing (Hong Kong, $35.4 billion)

At the age of 21 in 1950, Li Ka-Shing launched Cheung Kong Plastics with $6,500 saved and borrowed from relatives, named after a river. His philanthropic efforts through the Li Ka Shing Foundation have been substantial, donating over $3.8 billion to various causes, particularly in Greater China.

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UK Police Hunt Asylum Seeker Mistakenly Freed For Sex Offence

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UK police were still hunting Saturday for an Ethiopian asylum seeker and convicted sex offender whose crimes sparked a wave of anti-immigration protests and who was accidentally released from prison.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “appalled” by Friday’s “totally unacceptable” error that saw 38-year-old Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu freed rather than sent to an immigration detention centre.

This man must be caught and deported for his crimes,” the UK leader added.

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Kebatu had served the first month of a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman, but was reportedly due to be deported when the Prison Service mistake occurred.

READ ALSO:UK Is A Home, Not Hotel, Kemi Badenoch Tells Immigrants, Starmer’s Govt

Kebatu’s high-profile case earlier this year in Epping, northeast of London, sparked demonstrations in various English towns and cities where asylum seekers were believed to be housed, as well as counter-protests.

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Justice Secretary David Lammy said late Friday night that Kebatu was “at large in London” after he was seen boarding a train to the capital in Chelmsford, eastern England.

Essex Police, which is leading the search with the help of London’s Metropolitan Police, said Saturday that “inquiries are continuing at pace this morning to locate and arrest” him.

Officers worked throughout the night to track his movements, including scouring hours of CCTV footage,” the force added, noting “it is not lost on us that this situation is concerning to people”.

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The Telegraph reported he was wrongly categorised as a prisoner due to be released on licence and handed a £76 ($101) discharge grant.

The father of Kebatu’s anonymous teenage victim told Sky News that “the justice system has let us down”.

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Police arrested the asylum seeker in July after he repeatedly tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl and touch her legs, and made sexually explicit comments to her.

He also sexually assaulted an adult woman, placing a hand on her thigh, when she intervened to stop his interactions with the girl.

At the time, Kebatu was staying at Epping’s Bell Hotel, where scores of other asylum seekers have been accommodated, and which became the target of repeated protests.

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UK Is A Home, Not Hotel, Kemi Badenoch Tells Immigrants, Starmer’s Govt

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UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government over its immigration policy, declaring that Britain is “a home, not a hotel.”

Badenoch accused Labour of weakening the country’s borders and enabling mass automatic citizenship.

In a 1:11-minute video posted on her official X account on Friday, Badenoch claimed Labour’s proposed reforms could allow up to two million immigrants to automatically qualify for British citizenship starting next year.

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“From next year, two million immigrants can automatically claim British citizenship. Two million people! That’s nearly twice the population of Birmingham. That’s massive,” Badenoch said in the video.

Badenoch noted that the Conservative Party has introduced a deportation bill to bring immigration down.

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Among the measures she endorsed in the video were deporting all foreign criminals, mandatory age checks, no more pretending to be kids, tougher visa rules and salary thresholds, disapplying the Human Rights Act to immigration cases, and no more abusing human rights laws to judge deportations. Make asylum support repayable, and no permanent right to stay in the UK if you’ve relied on benefits.

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Until that’s law, we won’t fix this. Labour should adopt it now. It’s time to get tough. That’s what the Conservatives’ Deportation Bill delivers, and we’re going to go further. Our country is a home, not a hotel. And if we don’t defend it, no one else will.”

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In the caption that came with the video, she tweeted, “Labour has blocked every single measure we’ve put forward to cut immigration and stop abuse of the system.

“Now they’re pushing one half-arsed proposal — it’s weak; it won’t work. It’s time they stopped playing games and backed our Deportation Bill.”

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King Charles To Pray With Pope Leo In Historic Vatican Visit

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King Charles III will on Thursday meet Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican and make history as the first head of the Church of England to pray publicly with the pontiff for five centuries.

The 76-year-old monarch, who is the supreme governor of the Church of England, arrived in Rome on Wednesday evening with his wife, Queen Camilla, for what Buckingham Palace described as a “historic” state visit.

It will be Charles’s first meeting with Leo since the US-born pope took over as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May, following the death of Pope Francis.

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The royals will arrive at the Apostolic Palace at 10.45am (0845 GMT) for private talks with the pope.

READ ALSO:King Charles III To Visit Vatican Next Week

The king and queen will then join an ecumenical service at midday (1000 GMT) in the Sistine Chapel led by Pope Leo and the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, currently the senior cleric of the Church of England.

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Broadcast live by Vatican media, it will be the first time a reigning English or British monarch has prayed publicly with a pope since English king Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534.

Triggered by the pope’s refusal to annul the king’s marriage so he could marry another woman, the schism made the monarch head of the separate Church of England.

Thursday’s service, held beneath Michelangelo’s spectacular ceiling frescoes, will be centred on conservation and protecting the environment, a cause championed by Charles.

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It will bring together Catholic and Anglican traditions, with the choir from the Sistine Chapel joined by that from Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences.

– Schism –

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The religious break between London and Rome remains, even if there has been a significant rapprochement in recent decades.

In 1961, the late Queen Elizabeth II, Charles’s mother, became the first British monarch to visit the Holy See since the split.

The law was changed in 2013 so that marrying a Catholic would no longer disqualify someone from becoming monarch — although they still have to be a Protestant themselves.

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The rapprochement is important because “Anglicanism was born in reaction to the Catholic Church, and therefore in opposition,” said Hyacinthe Destivelle, a French priest and member of the Vatican’s dicastery (department) for promoting Christian unity.

READ ALSO:King Charles III To Visit Vatican Next Week

This is no longer the case, despite “theological differences in recent decades”, he told AFP.

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Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England — the mother church of the world’s 85-million-strong Anglican community — ordains women and allows priests to marry.

Sarah Mullally was recently named the first female archbishop of Canterbury, the Church’s top cleric, although she has yet to officially take up her post.

– Royal Confrater –

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Charles and Queen Camilla are also set to take part in a service at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, one of four major papal basilicas, which has historic links with the English crown.

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The king will be made a “Royal Confrater” of the basilica and presented with a specially designed seat for use by him and future British monarchs.

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Charles has visited the Vatican several times and met privately with Pope Francis on April 9, just days before the pontiff’s death.

The king sent his son and heir, William, to the funeral and his brother, Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, to Leo’s inauguration mass.

The visit comes as the Catholic Church celebrates the Jubilee, a year-long event held every 25 years, which has drawn millions of pilgrims to the Vatican.

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It also comes at a delicate time for Charles, following new revelations about his brother Prince Andrew, who is mired in a scandal surrounding late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew announced on Friday that he would relinquish his title as Duke of York, reportedly under pressure from Charles. He had already stepped back from royal duties in 2019.

AFP

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